𝓐𝓫𝓸𝓾𝓽 𝓶𝓮

𝓘 read a lot of books. I probably read too many books. I average around three novels a week, which might make it seem like I'm a loser with nothing better to do. I promise I have friends and a life, and I even have other hobbies and interests (like Avatar the Last Airbender, football/what most Americans call soccer, trying new foods, and learning new things). So how do I read three boks a week? All I do is spend almost every spare moment reading.

Of course, the number of books a person reads per week shouldn't really mean anything. If you only read one book per year (or fewer!) but still gain a lot from your reading experience, then you're doing just as well as I am. Maybe even better. Quality over quantity, and all that. And that's why I want to write up reflections, reviews, or reactions for all the books I've read -- to make sure I'm actually taking the time to think about my reading experiences, to analyze texts, to be critical, to possibly even start a conversation if enough people are, for some reason, paying attention to whatever nonsense I have to say. It's basically a digitized library, and it gives me an excuse to learn CSS. As you can see, it's still very a work in progress. I'm learning the basics of CSS as I go.

You may be wondering why I don't use one of the many book-tracking platforms that already exist. The answer is that those platforms are all very algorithmic. They treat books like data points. Many of them treat users like data points too. And very few of the algorithms are created out of a love for literature. Very little of it is designed to improve the literary landscape in any meaningful way. Most of it is there just to help sales and marketing teams figure out what's popular, allowing publishers to sell more stuff. Someone gets to make a lot of money in the process (usually not the author), and a piece of art gets reduced to a product that can be sold and consumed. It's the same story across much of the internet, and I'm sure you've heard it all before. I've become disenchanted with all those platforms, and so, I've decided to do my book tracking here, and I eventually hope to do away with all my accounts on other platforms.

Perhaps by ignoring the algorithms, I'll stop reading something simply because it's popular and start focusing more on what actually interests me. Perhaps not. At the end of the day, a lot actually interests me. I read trashy romances. I read pulpy thrillers. I read literary classics. I read books written for children and young adults. I read fantasy doorstoppers. I read short stories. I read experimental novels that nobody on Earth really understands. I read dense nonfiction. I read fanfiction. I read manga. I read poetry. I read whatever I'm in the mood for, and I believe all of it deserves to be taken seriously. And also, all of it deserves to be taken playfully. (I believe in a good mix of sincerity and irony.) If I absolutely had to choose genres/subgenres/types of books that tend to interest the most, it would be:

But don't put me in a box. My opinions about what I like change all the time, and at the end of the day, I'll read whatever. As long as it was written by a real human being and not a machine.